I was out at Junction City and a man there was telling me
that the fellow that killed Jim [Tom
Deaton] Deaton about a year later killed a young
fellow, just a kid of a boy, and this boy’s daddy came out and killed
this fellow with a Bowie Knife, and said he got him behind a rock house
and just cut him into ribbons. Said you could hear him holler for two
miles every time the old man would cut him.
[Deputy Sheriff Tom Deaton was
killed in 1893 at Fairy.]
Buck Anderson told me that after the war, he was just a
kid of a boy. He said a bunch of fellows came in there and made camp on
the Bosque. Nobody knew anything about them, but they were well-armed and
did a lot of hunting and when they were not hunting they were practicing
shooting at marks, and they were otherwise well-equipped and seemed like
good fellows. Somebody had a little old store there and these fellows
would come down once in awhile for supplies and set around. Buck was
standing around and Old Bill Oars came in and slapped him on the head with
his hat or hand. One of these fellows jumped down off the counter and
said, "You ... ... ... ... ... ...., I would kill you if you were
worth killing. "I will give you just a minute and a half to get out
of my sight," which Bill did in considerable less time than that.
These men were supposed to be a part of The James Boys and Younger Bunch.
Jim Whittaker killed Wild Bill
Wilson. Wilson was coming
from Gatesville. He died at Winter’s. He did not fall off his horse when
he was shot but came to Winters’s. [William Clift Winters at Langford’s
Cove] He dropped a mighty good Smith and Weston Pistol where he was shot.
He lived a few days before he died.
Ault Ferguson and Henry Carter killed a man by the name of
Parsons as he sat on a fence.
Taylor Hammack staid with them Basham, John was the
oldest, then Roy and then Taylor. Taylor was always in trouble.
Claunch and Snell, branded SXC. I was coming from
Gatesville once, just the other side of 4 Mile timber. Father had bought 9
or 10 cows and calves from Zack Stidham. His brand was Z. S. In them days,
you know, they never canceled a brand. They just counter branded below.
His mark was a close bob in the left ear and a shallow fork in the right
ear. Anyhow, in the bunch father bought was a cow we called "Cotton
Head." I hadn’t seen her in 8 or 9 years. This was after the war,
and as we were coming along I said to graves, "Marion, that looks
like old Cotton Head." We got up there and looked at her and could
see the brand SXC and two cross brands that had been canceled. She had a
white-faced yearling calf following her around. I didn’t know who owned
the brand then as Snell and Claunch had sold out. I was in town and saw
Jim Livingston and I said, "Jim, who owns the SXC Brand now?" He
said, Perry Merrill." I said, I have a cow and calf out home and that
I don’t want them counter branded and that he had better come to see me
about it. He later told me that Perry Merrill made Snell and Claunch pay
him.
A fellow named Brown lived below Gatesville. He knew old
man Groomer. They were both members of the same Masonic Lodge. Old Man
Brown gave the Bucket Bail Brand. This fellow wrote Groomer that he would
like for him to come and get his cattle. Groomer went down there and Brown
said a heifer yearling came there several years before and we got 10 or 12
head of cattle--the increase off that one heifer that old man Brown had
been taking care of for Groomer all that time. He said that she had lost
one big steer.
The last time I ever saw old Ace
Langford, me and Graves
was coming along over there and met Ace coming along with a bundle of oats
and his saddle bags on his arm. We stopped and talked a minute with the
old fellow. He went on in Spurlin’s store and I told Marion I bet he had
a six shooter in them bags, and Marion said maybe two. We went on in the
store and Ace had laid his saddle bags down. I was kinda leaning on my
elbows and eased one around so I could feel the bag and sure enough there
was a pistol. There might have been another gun in the other bag.
Old Squire Potts used to always carry a gun in his saddle
bags, and when he would get off his horse, he would carry his saddle bags
around on his arm. I remember one time Jim and Henry Carter and a bunch
was fighting in the snow. Old Potts came along and evidently wanted to go
across for something. He stood there for quite a while. Finally he walked
right by them, and one of the boys started to hit him with a snow ball. He
turned around and said the first man that hits me with a snow ball, I am
going to shoot his ... off, and the old ... would have done it too.
Gabe Smith, Ace Langford and Sam Gholson--there was
something between them before the War. You remember Rice used to be the
head of a little bunch. One time they were out looking for Sam and Sam had
placed his men in a narrow canyon and made a trail for Rice and this other
bunch to follow into the canyon. But it seems that the other bunch crossed
the trail and messed things up. Gholson was laying for them and would have
killed them all. They kidnapped Gabe Smith and carried him over across
Cowhouse to a little house. When they got over there at this house, they
brought in Sam Gholson with his hands tied and Gholson was complaining
about them uniting Gabe and keeping him tied. The next morning they turned
Gabe loose to go home. He got a little way off and in the timber, when he
looked back and thought he saw them taking Gholson down there to shoot
him, but they had kept Gabe’s horse down there, and it was Gabe’s
horse that he saw them leading. This was all a sham about having Sam tied
. I heard that they was going to hang Gabe, but old Ace was mad about
something and failed to show up, for they was going to hang Gabe and burn
his body in the brush.
Old man Smith would have killed old Ace at Gatesville, but
his pistol snapped twice. Vardeman, a lawyer in Gatesville, got lots of
money out of Ace and liked to joke Smith. He told him that Ace was coming
down and stay all night with him. Smith says, "If he ... ...
